This blog will be a repository of the postings of a military nature from my other blog and new ones since then, especially about the Malaysian Military in particular. Hopefully such knowledge about the hardworking men and women who tirelessly work for the security of Malaysia will be acknowledged and appreciated in this way.
"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
- Winston Churchill

Monday, May 12, 2014

Sea Basing ? Not Such A New Concept

When the navy chief Admiral Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Jaafar espoused the concept of Sea Basing and then further elaborated by the Minister of Defence himself, many has jumped on the comment bandwagon as if it is such a new concept. Many may have forgotten that the Navy has used their MPSS for such a purpose at a time in their history before as evidenced by this photo off the Sabah coast where the Inderapura played the role of mothership for the Jerong class FAC-Gs.

It has also been reported that a decommissioned oil rig has been proposed to be used as a logistics base or mothership but to me that is a bit wild as such oil rigs typically ride high over the water and easy ingress and egress for the vessels that they are supposed to support may be difficult, amongst others.

As for using the existing remaining MPSSs or the Auxilliary ships BM5 and BM6 as the motherships, I quite agree but the lead time may take a long time as the MPSS would surely need to be replaced by a new class of MRSS in their current logistics role while the BM5 and BM6 are still preoccupied with their missions in the far oceans.

So what is the navy to do to then to materialise the creation of a small naval base offshore on urgent basis? There is another methodology of sea-basing that the Navy has successfully implemented in their efforts to safeguard our territory before, that is to build up artificial reefs like we have in the Spratlys where we created some of the bases overnight in fact by grounding barges and building up the land around it. In fact since the land borders for the ESSCOMM is clearly defined, we could even build it at a proper but quick pace and give it a proper naval base functionality than a rush job like the proposed oil rig solution.

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